Excerpt from Peter Kick’s “Desperate Steps”: Gary Rankin, Part II

Peter Kick, author of “Desperate Steps: Life, Death, and Choices Made in the Mountains of the Northeast,” which I mentioned in my column of Nov. 20, agreed to let us reprint a chapter from his book here on our blog. But it’s pretty long, so we’re running it as a serial. You can read Part I of the chapter about Gary Rankin and his misadventure at Kaaterskill Falls in the Catskills here. Here is Part II:

Because the Catskills are typically dry in the summer months, Peter Schutt, who built the Laurel House Hotel in 1852, obtained water rights to Spruce Creek. Schutt dammed the creek, and for a fee, opened the gates so guests could briefly enjoy the cascade. Henry David Thoreau visited the spot with his mentor Ellery Channing in 1840, at the site of the bluestone milldam that Schutt later improved. The breeched dam, since improved, still exists. Some people have survived falls from the upper ledges into the plunge pool at times of high water, when the pool is several feet deep. At such times, the mist generated by the powerful vortex of the falls makes the smooth shale slippery and acts to destabilize the clay surfaces. But very little water spilled over the falls the day Gary and Ovel visited, and the surrounding woods and the trail were dry. The pair had walked up the trail partially in the shallow streambed of enchanting Spruce Creek, which emanates from North-South Lake as Lake Creek before it flows over the falls and runs along next to the footway. The scene they encountered at the falls was one of bucolic summer revelry. Several hikers sat in the amphitheater 70 feet above. Some dangled their legs over the lip. Gary and Ovel also saw people on the very top of the falls.

Upon their arrival at the base of the falls, hikers emerge from the forest and enter the huge echoing void of the two-tiered chasm. Gary saw that others were in the amphitheater at the base of the top plume—a 170-foot vertical drop—and his immediate impulse, like so many others, was to find out how to get there himself. He noticed that the other hikers were using the old footpath to reach the area, and he told Ovel he wanted to go to the top. He set out. He had on lightweight hiking sneakers with good traction, jeans, and a T-shirt. Ovel declined to join him. Many years later, she said, “God made me short for a reason. I’m deathly afraid of heights!” So Gary went ahead alone while Ovel sat on the boulders below the falls, enjoying the cool air of the chasm. A family asked her to take their picture. These people saw Gary up above and decided to take the same route he was taking to reach the amphitheater. A procession formed. Ovel sat by herself, taking in the scenery.

“I saw Gary at the top of the [first] falls and heard him yelling that he was on his way down,” Ovel recalled. “He must have seen everything he wanted to see. I was just relaxing and enjoying myself, sitting there alone, absorbing the beauty of God’s creation, when I heard some commotion coming from behind me. I heard some rocks or what sounded like gravel falling, but I didn’t think much of it at that moment. However in a few seconds, I heard a man yell, ‘Someone fell!’ I made my way toward the commotion because I had recently been trained in first aid and CPR.” Ovel rushed over the rocky terrain toward the sounds and was stunned to see Gary at the base of the chasm’s east flank, below the amphitheater, lying immobile.
Witnesses later told her that the ground had given way beneath Gary’s feet. He had fallen 70 feet on a near–vertically pitched slope, which she was told was a 50-foot near–free fall and 20 feet of sliding on a high-angled, rocky slope.

“When I reached him he was unconscious and all scraped up, with rocks in his mouth and nose, and he wasn’t breathing,” Ovel said. “I don’t know how, but I kept my cool and didn’t panic. Gary’s tongue blocked his air pas­sage, so I moved it to one side in order to start CPR [cardiopulmonary resus­citation], and he began breathing on his own. From my training, I knew not to move him. His head was hanging off the edge of a boulder, and I realized that any mistake could cause paralysis. I don’t know how in the world I was able to think clearly, but I was able to function.”

Neither Gary nor Ovel carried a cell phone, but among the 20 or so adults at the falls that day, one was finally able to call out. Cell phone reception is weak and frequently unavailable in the area, and the 911 calls were repeatedly disconnected. After a half-dozen attempts at maneuvering into various loca­tions, a call was made, the nature and location of the accident was conveyed, and the New York State Police were notified. The state police responded and notified DEC, the lead agency for search and rescue (SAR) in the State of New York. After 40 minutes, as Ovel recalls—a rapid response time considering the combined road and trail distance to the falls— a state police officer and a DEC forest ranger appeared at the site, followed by paramedics from the Town of Hunter. Because a helicopter could not be used to evacuate Gary from the nar­row confines of the ravine, he was stabilized and carried out via litter. Ovel, and others who had been witness to the scene offered their help, and were directed to walk out ahead of the paramedics. “Just please, please tell me he’s alive,” Ovel implored the rescuers. She was told that Gary had been stabilized and was breathing on his own. Uphill on Route 32, beyond the parking lot in an open area at the top of Kaaterskill Clove, a medical evacuation (medevac) helicopter waited. A paramedic offered Ovel her cell phone so she could contact friends and family. “And with only one bar on the phone I was actually able to call my friend Alice. Hers was the only number I could remember. I told her what had happened and asked her to inform our friends and family and to get people to start prayers for Gary. So much of this was a miracle to me. God was right there with us that day. The phones worked, people helped out, and rescuers were fast and effective. I realized we were pretty fortunate.”

Gary was flown 45 miles to Albany Medical Center. Because there was no room for Ovel in the medevac, two of the strangers Ovel met at the falls drove her to the hospital. “I don’t know how, but I managed to keep it together emotionally. That’s really odd, too, since I’m the kind of person that cries over sappy commercials and less.”

Gary had broken a wrist and all of his ribs on the left side, one of which punctured a lung. He suffered two crushed vertebrae and a ruptured spleen. The worst of his injuries was traumatic brain injury (TBI) to his frontal lobe. He spent the next two months in comas, one of them medically induced because he continually fought his respirator. “Doctors didn’t believe I was going to wake up,” Gary said later, “but I fooled them all.”

When Gary awoke, his immediate recollection was a missions trip he’d taken to West Africa two years earlier. He knew Ovel. He recognized his friends and visitors. His TBI had affected his speech, but he clearly conveyed to Ovel that the first thing he wanted to do was look at the pictures he’d taken on his Africa trip. “When I told Gary that the trip had taken place two years earlier, he was shocked and bewildered,” she said.

Gary’s next clear memory was being transported to a rehab center in the nearby town of Lake Katrine. “I didn’t realize I couldn’t walk, so I kept getting up and falling. They had to put a mattress on the floor so I wouldn’t injure myself. Nobody thought I was going to walk again, but I did, and fairly quickly, too.”